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Tartakovskys new miniseriesPrimal, which premieres tonight on Adult Swim, is his most ambitious work yet.
Primal trailer.
Its predicated on a striking gambit: absolutely no dialogue.
Its violence is sudden and evocative.
But most important, the show proves to be endlessly thrilling.
Everything I develop has to be organic.
If a story isnt working, maybe that story doesnt want to be told.
And then came the last season ofSamurai Jack.
We can tell more sophisticated stories.
We can get more emotional, darker.
Thankfully that was met with a lot of success and we had a really fun time doing it.
Basically, my boss at the time, Mike Lazzo, was like, Whats next?
In that time I have been developingPrimalas a short film, so I pitched it to him.
I said, Its a caveman and a dinosaur.
They have a tragedy, they bond, and give a shot to survive this primordial world.
That was our launching point.
Its very audacious to do a show with no dialogue.
It made that decision simple.
We messed around with it a little bit in the beginning.Should he grunt?
Should he have a few words?It is very, very easy to become cheesy.
I can see that.Because this jot down of thing has been done.
Its very easy to become cheesy.
[Mimics caveman noises, then laughs.]
You start to laugh at it, rather than be drawn in by it.
So I was like, We can have him scream, we can have him grunt.
But not grunt to talk.
I think we can get away with communicating everything through our drawings.
What is your process like?
Even when I write scripts, I visualize it first.
From day one, as soon as I started drawing, thats how its been.
It used to be frustrating because I would see something, but I wasnt able to draw it.
That translation is definitely getting better.
The process is: We think of an idea, an image, or sometimes just a feeling.
I want to watch this episode and get this feeling from it.
What elements do I need for this to happen?
Were just getting better at it now.
How do you find the right pacing and tenor for your action sequences?I always pitch.
But I was wrong.
Everything is about the pitch and the storytelling, just like when youre telling a story to your friends.
I believe action is very musical.
Theres got to be ups and downs, theres got to be slow parts and fast parts.
I let the pitching guide it.
Are you influenced by film noir lighting techniques?Yeah, absolutely.
The noir lighting is some of the best and most interesting because they dont have color.
They have black and white, so they make very graphic compositions in [movies] likeThe Third Man.
We studied all that stuff tremendously.
But because ours is graphic composition, it gets heightened.
Noir is definitely a big inspiration.
Do you draw any influences from silent cinema?Not so much.
This is my love of Sergio Leone films, from the pulp books like Robert E. HowardsConannovels andSolomon Kane.
Loneliness was a big theme inSamurai Jack.
InPrimal, the lead character loses his family in a brutal dinosaur attack.
Is loneliness something you consciously want to explore in this story as well?
I wanted things in their most simplistic and raw form.
Theyre equal in a way.
Theyre both kind of beasts.
It didnt feel right.
This is a more interesting relationship.
How did you establish the look ofPrimals world?
Its very different fromSamurai Jack.Our number-one goal was grittiness.
We wanted things to be very drawn, very detailed.
We didnt want to just repeatSamurai Jack.
With this, we love the grittiness of illustrations fromFrank Frazetta.
We wanted to do something that iconic.
Im a fan ofAstro Boyand thought, I can draw this manly,Astro Boytype style.
He needs to be more mature, more bold, more gritty.
What do you hope audiences take away from their journey withPrimal?Fun.
Something different than theyve experienced before.
Especially in todays landscape where theres so much programming, how do you stand out?
How do you get people to tune in?
You give them something different.
